Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 203
About this tablet
A small, pillow-shaped clay tag from Adab in southern Iraq, written around 2400 BCE, recording timber. A scribe notes lots of long wooden beams and poles — some new, some rejected or cast off — and books them against two men, Ur-Dumuzida and A-zuzu, with the place-name Isin attached to A-zuzu's entries. It is the sort of unglamorous inventory slip that kept a temple or palace building-yard supplied, and one of the earliest glimpses we have of how Sumerians accounted for construction lumber, a scarce and valuable import in a treeless floodplain.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Ten long beams, new stock — charged to Ur-Dumuzida. A further quantity of long beams (the number is broken away) — charged to A-zuzu, of Isin. Then an entry involving wool, or something delivered from it, and a courier; the line is damaged and its sense is uncertain. Finally, five long poles, listed as discarded or rejected — also A-zuzu, of Isin. In short: a running tally of timber received and written off, with each lot assigned to a named man.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine10 long beams, also new — Ur-Dumuzida. [n] long [beams …] — A-zuzu, Isin. … wool(?) therefrom — the courier(?) — 5 long poles, discarded — A-zuzu, Isin.
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(u@c) ur2 gid2 u3 gibil ur-dumu-zi-da [n] gid2#? [...] a-zu-zu isin2 x SIG2-ta# im-kas4-e 5(disz@t) gesz-gid2 szub-ba a-zu-zu isin2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 203. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252787) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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